In previous video conferencing methods and systems, there may be a 1 to 1 mapping between endpoints and encoders, as depicted in FIG. 3. Alternatively, there may be an n to 1 mapping between endpoints and encoders (i.e., mapping from n endpoints to 1 encoder), as depicted in FIG. 4. A drawback of the first approach is that it is expensive to deploy due to the high number of encoders relative to the number of endpoints. A drawback of the second approach is that it provides a relatively low encoding quality, because the audio/video streams must be encoded using the capabilities of the lowest bit-rate endpoint out of the group of endpoints.